A review by livimack
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

challenging informative lighthearted reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

My thoughts during the first half:
  1. I’ve never seen a better piece of evidence that Sally Rooney was a competitive debater. 
  2. If I were in a different headspace, I imagine I would have liked this book. 
  3. Unfortunately, I was not in the right headspace for this book, so all I heard was a bunch of narcissists saying perfectly mundane statements like they’re the most revolutionary of intellectual ideas in the world.
  4. Oh well, at least I’ve been reading better books at the same time. 
Thoughts from the second half:
  1. Okay I admit that even though I am not in the right headspace to appreciate this book, it’s definitely growing on me. 
  2. It still feels like a load of ideas have been shoehorned in by someone who really wants to write serious non-fiction but isn’t allowed to. 
  3. If anyone wants to chat at any point about how hard Sally Rooney projects into her own characters, feel free to hit me up. 
  4. Either way the characters have grown on me a lot. 
  5. As much as I still feel like she was overly reliant on sex scenes as a narrative tool, I still want to know why she didn’t give me an orgy.  
  6. The book was weirdly Shakespearean at times. 
  7. Yeah, no, I don’t regret reading this - it definitely grew on me. 
  8. This is the first audiobook with an Irish narrator that I’ve ever sped up the speed of. 
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